Emanation: A Strategic Duel Across Three Planes of Existence

Emanation is a symbolically rich two-player strategy card game in which you play as dueling theurgists. The theurgists are witness to the emanation of a mysterious divine intelligence, but struggle to define its nature, so they must attach the most appropriate and potent images to their perception. As these images come into play, they interact with each other, enhancing or depleting the potency of other images, bestowing new effects, or disrupting the articulation of an opponent’s perception altogether. The task of the player is to strategically assign the right symbols in the right order so that their arrangement of divinity exceeds that of the opponent. 

The cards, representing emanations, are sent down across three planes: the physical plane, the astral plane, and the mental plane. There are only two slots on each plane, so the theurgist must be discerning about which symbols to place. As the game consists of three consecutive rounds, it is often wise to conserve certain cards for the future. In addition to the three planes, the theurgist also ascribes a crown card to their board of symbols. The crown card is a hidden value—until the end of the round—corresponding to the theurgist’s conviction in the potency of their symbols.

Although the potency of the symbols are compared discretely across the three planes, the three planes also influence each other. The fecund physical plane can nourish the astral or the mental; the nebulous astral plane might obscure or remove symbols from the mental or physical; while the clear-eyed mental plane often bestows enhancements on what lies below, as well as having exclusive access to the hidden value of the crown card.

Over three rounds, the theurgist who evoked the vision of greater potency more times claims fidelity to the divine intelligence—in other words, victory. Often the boards that result during the course of a game contain hidden divinatory meaning for the players.

Emanation combines limited space lane battling and combo dueling with enginebuilding elements in a game of strategy, bluffing and planning ahead. In addition to chrome-heavy combos, cards can also be strategically withheld to later rounds as the limited play space and limited draw both impose restrictions that players must creatively work around. Sometimes it’s better to save a card for later or not play it at all, while other times a player will need to turn effects against their own cards to win—proccing effects with weaker cards, removing those cards and playing something stronger. What action will you take? Will you take on the other player directly or get creative by turning effects against your own cards? 

Both players draw from the same 60-card deck, with 54 unique cards and 6 duplicates. Cards have deep and sometimes rule-breaking effects and exploring the interplay between the three planes of perception—physical, astral, and mental—as well as the hidden crown plane where only a single facedown card is played each turn, is crucial to mastering this tight, intricate game. 

Emanation is designed to be easy to learn and easy to set up. The game is highly portable, consisting of a shared deck of 60 [material] cards and 6 wooden crown tokens. Also included in the box is a 16-page booklet consisting of rules for gameplay and divination, as well as 30 damage counters to assist with the tracking of added and reduced potency values during gameplay. The whole thing comes in a reusable [material] box which looks great on a shelf.

Just a Game?
Besides the coincidental distribution of symbols that occur during play, the cards of Emanation may also be used in a non-competitive, cartomancy context. Instructions for use of the Emanation deck for this purpose will be provided.